Pope Francis’s appointment of Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández as the new head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is one of the most important ways in which he seeks to project his outlook within the Church. The Holy Father has released an interesting letter to explain his approach to this Dicastery – once known as the Inquisition. In it, he said the need was for theologians who do not content themselves with “a desk theology” or a cold and hard logic that seeks to dominate everything. “We need theology to be attentive to a fundamental criterion that considers ‘inadequate’ any theological conception that ultimately casts doubt on God’s omnipotence and, in particular, on his mercy,” he wrote. One word that’s often used to describe the approach of Archbishop (and soon, Cardinal) Fernández is “dialogue”. That is, he will seek not simply to impose doctrinal orthodoxy on dissident theologians, but to engage in conversation with them in the hope of greater mutual understanding, including with non-Catholics. In principle, everyone likes the idea of dialogue, but as John L Allen Jr, one of the Herald’s new Vatican Special Correspondents (in collaboration with Crux), has observed, it’s easy to conduct a dialogue with those you agree with; the more difficult task is to engage with those you disagree with. Many of the potential dissidents will be on the conservative end of the doctrinal spectrum.
Indeed, many conservative Catholics are troubled about the appointment – some of those concerns are expressed by Diane Montagna in these pages. But Archbishop Fernández only takes up his appointment in September. We should wish him well at the outset and judge his work as it happens. In an interesting interview with Elise Allen, published in the Herald online, Archbishop Fernández responded to these critics, a little defensively: “I am not a Freemason, nor an ally of the New World Order, nor a Soros spy infiltrated in the Church… I try to be an honest person, I confess often, I love the Church and its doctrine, most of my writings are about spirituality and prayer. I cannot conceive my life without God. So [the critics] may have confidence, and it is better [for them] to look for enemies of the faith elsewhere.”
Certainly, the archbishop is an experienced – if sometimes controversial – theologian but also a biblical scholar, and the job he has been given will require him to exercise both roles. It’s also notable that he is a former parish priest in his native Argentina. So when the Pope writes in his letter about the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith having “an evangelising objective and a pastoral sensitivity”, what he seems to mean is that he wants its head to have an eye to the way in which doctrine is received at a grassroots level, and in pastoral practice.
So, an uncompromising reiteration of Church teaching about the inadmissibility of, for instance, gay marriage, could seem alienating to Catholic homosexuals, if it were not accompanied by an insistence that everyone, of every orientation, is loved by God and welcome in the Church. As Archbishop Fernández says, in many cases, the medium becomes the message – how you express Church teaching becomes in effect the teaching itself. The difficulty is in squaring fidelity with Catholic doctrine with the desire to reflect God’s mercy. It’s a genuine challenge
If there are concerns about the direction of the dicastery under its new head, it is probably to do with the papal insistence that it must ensure that both its documents and those of others “accept the recent Magisterium”.
We shall see what that means in practice, but it seems to convey the sense that Pope Francis’s ideas must supersede those of his predecessors and that the dicastery will enforce that. Yet the most immediate problem for it is not, in fact, traditionalists, but potential schism within the German Church.
The broader issue for this doctrinal enforcement body is not that it has in the past been too authoritarian – and the implicit criticism of past practice by Pope Francis seems to refer not just to the inhumanity of the old Inquisition but to the rigour that Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict) brought to the role – but in the temptation to pre-emptive over-reach.
John Henry Newman gave the best account yet of the development of doctrine (a concept which Pope Francis refers to) but he was also a minimalist when it came to papal control. He felt that the real job of the papacy was negative, to preserve the Church from error. So, as well as teaching, which the Pope must do, the papacy’s core task is, when asked, to determine whether new developments are compatible with Catholic truth. In the case of the German Synodal Way, that is a real question and the answer may be “no”.
We hope God will guide Archbishop Fernández in his new role. Let’s pray for him.
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